


full fathom five

by Amber



Series: Create Something Every Day! (October 2018) [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Drowning, M/M, October Prompt Challenge, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-28 00:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16230113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: Prompt 6: Drowning.





	full fathom five

Caleb has always found it peaceful beneath the water. Down at the bottom of the bath, cocooned in the warmth of it, his long hair floating freely, his body weightless. There is no sound, no flame or expectation. If his lungs would hold he would maybe like to stay.

The ocean is colder and more expansive and yet less isolating, somehow; with the buffeting current and fish-gleams he has the sense that he is not alone down here. Though that, too, has much to do with a hand in his own. It's too dark this deep to make out many of Fjord's chiseled features, but Caleb has his eyes open anyway, even if the salt stings them. 

His lungs are burning, and even with popped ears the pressure at this depth is dizzying. But Fjord squeezes his hand and, silently, pulls him along. They travel together to the edge of a great black wall of mass, too huge and vast beneath them to be comprehensible. At first Caleb thinks it is stone, or whatever coral is made from, but then it shifts and he realizes it is living. The size of it makes his stomach drop. Vertiginous.

When Fjord kisses him he does not know what to do with his hands. They stay splayed awkwardly outwards, suspended in the water, fingers clutching nothing. There's seawater between their mouths, so when Caleb's lips part for the warm swipe of a tongue, all he can taste is salt. Fjord — big, quiet, careful — weaves his strong green fingers into Caleb's hair. It's everything he's wanted. It's everything he's wanted for months — since maybe the circus or the city. It's everything he's wanted for longer than that, a desperate clinging fear of loneliness.

Behind him, a vast eye opens.

There is water all around, water touching every bit of his skin, intimate and intrusive. It is comforting, to be so held. When Caleb relearns to use his hands, he endeavors to share that comfort, palms sliding over the shape of muscle under skin. He feels out teeth filed crookedly blunt with his tongue, thinks about how it is to know somebody else's secrets. He's hot between the legs, touch-starved, shameless. Fjord takes care of it with patient, gentle touches.

Is he cleaner, underwater? There is no scent down here, unless it is the direct taste of another's tongue across his own. Naked and soundless half his spells are impossible. Who is he, without the dirt and magic and fear. Who is he, stripped back to the quick?

A shadow moves below them, gargantuan, beyond comprehension, hungry.

Caleb doesn't realize he's breathed in water until it's too late. His lungs spasm suddenly, convulsant, confused. He cannot take air from the water, and a dozen dozen bubbles emerge in a coughed up flurry, rushing away towards the surface far above.

He kicks, a spasmodic reaction, and perhaps would flail further of Fjord wasn't holding him so closely and so tight. They're skin to skin. He cradles Caleb comfortingly as he struggles desperately for what he needs. Fights for life. Hasn't he always been a coward and a survivor? Bottom of the barrel cockroach, that's Caleb Widogast. 

But the choking subsides. Fjord rocks him gently as it dies away, Caleb giving in to the water. One final jerk and he goes limp, and Fjord kisses his slack lips with tender sorrow, and lets go.

The creature doesn't speak. How could it? It's noise would unmake the world. But Fjord hears a distinct and yet solely conceptual SOON, for a moment taking up all the space in his head, as he watches Caleb's body drifting downwards to where his hungry master waits.

And with a sudden rush of the ocean cold in his lungs Fjord

wakes up,

coughing, guilty, scared. His heart breaking out of his chest. No seawater and bile this time, just panic like a vice around his lungs.

Caleb is sleeping closest to the fire; the banked coals cast his sleeping face in fire and shadow. Fjord dares to gently touch the bristle on his jaw, so tender, praying that he doesn't wake and ask Fjord what the fuck he thinks he's doing. Fjord has never known what he is doing. He started drowning beneath a broken ship and never truly stopped.


End file.
